Saturday, 26 April 2008

Bull-hard, I Presume

There’s a play, coming soon at the theatre near you. It shall be acted by the maximum of three actors called, in order of their appearance, protagonist, deuteragonist and tritagonist.
It’s epithalamium is by none other than Rudyard. Kipling:

Take up the White Man’s burden
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard.

The protagonist is a certain aspersive columnist who has been accused of racist tendencies, because he writes with disturbing understanding of the Weltanschauung of his fans, depicting their gesalt in ironic tone of subliminal racism. The natives of the backward country, where he’s settled, feel he creates too much political and racial tension. They feel he acts too much as an impotent imperialist stranded in a ‘dark continent’, like his predecessors, the likes of Henry Morton Stanley and Dr. Livingstone. Like them he wishes to transform the ‘dark continent’ after his disputed kind that refuses to embody the genius loci, the spirit of the land. So, due impotence, decays in slow burn of liver-lipped irony and sterile imagination.

The protagonist, in one of his column, decides to represent the social context of what he sees as Africans stasis as something waiting to be discovered by the élan and vitality of the Occident, or sinological adventurers. This gets the goat of another columnist, the deuteragonist of the play, who, having just awoken to the dupery and condescension of deflating imperialist mind, writes, in not so complementary manner, about the protagonist, ending up baying for his blood on public radio. The editor of the protagonist is forced by mutual detritions of working relationship, and public outcry, to dismiss the protagonist, who subsequently is duly elected to column chair by another newspaper group whom the previous editor insinuates has better tolerance for prejudice. The protagonist then continue sowing his myth relating havoc with effects of racial outrage in renewed energy and vindicated assumption. And is thinking of ways to spur the implied stasis of African collective psyche into progress.

In the absence of repenting nostos from the protagonists, the creators of the play decided, for dramatic effect, to stage the denouement in a court of law. The protagonist is summoned to appear before the judge, the tritagonist, to argue the merits of his case, which he proceed to defend as freedom of speech against intentions of prejudice. During the court case he invokes the likes of J.S. Mill, On Liberty, to support his argument for freedom of speech, neglecting to reveal that Mill emphasized absence of hurt and prejudice to others for that freedom to be justified.

The deuteragonist, who opened the case against the protagonist bases the gist of his accusation on the fact that courts of law must not allow the dressing up of paternalistic tendencies and racial undertones as ill-worn defence for freedom of speech. His argument is dressed up in banalities, clotted and circumbendibus to make appeal for profundity. The judge subsequently recueses himself on ground of suffering from ifobesity as result of argument before him.

The new judge is forced on his first day to dust his Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics to familiarize himself with moral virtues as characterised by the deuteragonist’s argument. This judge tritagonist is an ambitious, protean man, who’s not above the ruck and muck of political shenanigans. And feel the time has arrived for him, since he was deracinated by the speed by which apartheid system was ditched without his personal contribution, to prove his bona fides in catching the politics of liberation by their coattails. He wishes to make example of our protagonist, but the law is against him. Eventually he has to admit that legal justice is ill-suited to judge moral ethics, especially in a society fresh from historical prejudice against one group of people. Thus the judge was heard, in his closing remarks, saying; “The comprehensiveness of legal justice would demand that all of us queue in the gallows for our respective sins, and those of our inheritance, were we to apply to rigorously apply them to moral ethics. Moral law’s justice cannot rest on precept that ‘whatever the law does not command, it forbids.’ That would make it barbaric and too closely based on the Mosaic law of afore. Hence we’re compelled to go with Ubuntu here, the precept that magnanimity is the value that embodies all moral ethics.”

Thus the element of tragedy is averted. An aristo-trash columnist is saved by African law he disparages, and is not wrongly made into martyr for freedom of speech. ‘The height of error in writing without any sense of history,’ the local paper quoted the closing remarks of the judge; ‘is revealed in using writing as means of performance art without sense of responsibility. Writers who obsess over the past might reflect history through a prism of pain and misfortune, a tragic outlook that’s depressive sometimes; but in turn they avoid the foolishness of trivialising other people’s pain. Be that as it may. Trivialising other people’s pain might be highly irresponsible and reprehensible, but it’s not criminal. We should stop the wrong mentality of criminalising and demonising people who do not agree with us . . . Often our struggle against prejudice affords us opportunity to come to independent sense of who are . . . It is the writer’s consoling capacity to create explanatory myths for their passions, even prejudice. But they can never be held responsible for the actions others take, even if inspired by their writings. That is the moral tertium quid this court is not willing to enter into, even for pursuit of justice. Case dismissed.’ The judge then pounded his gavel, and when interviewed outside court he said; “As Max Beerbohm said of Kipling, we may say of his lesser talented chichi chicks with ‘the fascination of abomination’; in whom ‘the schoolboy, the bounder, and the brute’ find ‘brilliant expression.’ Let’s stop being so Bull-hard about it!”

Wednesday, 16 April 2008

Zimbabwe

To me the Zimbabweans are the most complicated political lot I’ve ever had the invidious task to follow. Here are people who are supposed to have voted the opposition party into majority of government, and speculatively presidential seat. They’re rightly asked by that opposition into a stay away strike until the electoral results are released. What do they do? Only 15% of them heed the call. What do you call that? It completely baffles me.

Some have said Zimbabweans are afraid to stay out because they’d loose their jobs. But I thought private business in Zimbabwe was supposed to be on the opposition side, ipso facto, one would expect them to support that call. Others have said Zimbabweans are too poor and hungry to heed stay-away. Do they think people who fight for political change in their respective countries do so because of full stomach? Two things are possible here. Either those who report on Zimbabwean issues do not know what they’re talking about; or have vested interests in reporting as they do.

Personally I maintain the stance that Zimbabweans, and no one else, know exactly what is going on in their country. And as outside people the best we can do is to support their endeavors, but we can do the work for them. In my opinion, it wrong what the ZEC is doing, withholding electoral results for this long. It can only foster a bad situation into flared up civil war. Please, let’s here more condemnations from our leaders that the situation there is untenable. Zimbabwe is tottering into a very, very bad situation. Zimbabwes, please, it is time you take up the situation in your country into your own hands wherever you are. You cannot keep saying we’re running away from a monster (Mugabe). Monsters, when are slain is by ordinary people who become heroes to their your own inspirations. Mandelas are not born, but made by circumstances.

Regret

I gave birth two months after my final High school exams. Lusapho refused to acknowldge our child. He Left me under the cloud to go to Jo'burg when I told him I'd not abort our child. My daggers glinted for his blood.
I heard he worked at a five star hotel. News reached me also that he had morals of an alley cat in the golden city. So I can’t say I was really he came back, seven years later, wasted, mere skin and bone of hacking coughs.
“You look like a zombie,” my, our, seven year old son said with detached brutal honesty only children are capable of when I introduced them. He did look a frightful colour of a corpse. I thought it was time I told my mother who the father of her grandson was. I had kept it secret from her all those years though I’m sure she had her suspicions. The day I told her I had gone to visit Lusapho. He was walking me back home after my visit, his charm at its peak.
“What we regret most are not mistakes but missed opportunities,” he said with sad visage, tapping the side of his nose as he always did when he was nervous.
“Whatever do you mean?” I asked upset mindedly.
“In another world, at another time, I’d have found a job in this town, married you. Then we would have become a proper family with our son.” Said he in bromidic overtones, revealing his perfect piano keys like teeth.
“But that wouldn’t have been you. We’re born the persons we become by our choices.” This sounded harsher than I had intended.
“And usually end up prisoners of our characters.” He wryly added.
My mother must have been watching us through her bedroom window because when I came inside the house she commented about the resemblance Lusapho had to my son, ‘especially when he laughs.’
“That’s because he’s the father.” My unguarded reaction told her everything. I was too tired of keeping secrets. She handed Lusapho a glass of juice with affable contempt that disembarrassed her grudge. I suppose she was glad her cynical suspicions were finally confirmed.
The following evening Lusapho sent me a poem he had written, a plaguey poor thing really, with phoney ring of self-dramatisation; but I appreciated the effort more than the results. He knew I loved literature. He constantly joked about how my love of books makes me neglect other people.
His face, my son’s face, twisted with sadness as he left for his home. The sun was no more visible behind the mountains of our youth but shone the red glow of its setting with a firmament of dying things. The careless grace of things, I thought.
Life keeps rushing to the horizon.
There’s a seed of failure in all things human, freedom even to misspend. Death, being the ultimate of all human failures. “Let us live always mindful of this moment love,” said he after the moment of eloquent silence passed between us.
Within weeks he became febrile. One night he started having serious sezuires, I had to phone the ambulance. As a doctor I knew the end was near. I took him to my arms as we waited. The caged animal in his chest beat franticly. His eyes though were full of puzzled gentleness.
The ambulance never came. Such things you expect when you stay in black townships of South Africa. It took me back to the night our son was born. I gave birth on the couch after waiting in vain for it. Luckily, my mother, a nurse, knew what to do. Ambulance drivers are stiff scared to enter the township, especially during weekends at night. I didn’t really mind with Lusapho, because, as a doctor, I knew there wasn’t much the hospital could do for him, his CD4+ lymphocyte had fallen too low to respond to antibiotics and ARV cocktails.
He didn’t show signs of fear of death. He just looked at me with resigned self-surrendering love. I injected the intravenous injections I had brought for him, which were obviously not working for him since he was plagued with polymorphous lesions, and variety of clinical cutaneous manifestations. There was Candidiasis all over his mouth and tongue. His infected lungs had spread the infection to the brain. His kidneys were bloated, having collapsed four days before. The opportunistic diseases, like TB and pneumonia were at critical stage. I realise he wouldn’t make it.
That night he fluctuated between sleep and vague awakenings in my arms, often loosing his consciousness, sinking into supine confusion. I sat with him, trying to engage in conversations to keep his consciousness. One time I went to the kitchen to fetch him a glass of water and, coming back, found him capering around the bedroom, cavorting and ranting, pop-eyed. He was dancing a twirling, shaking his head like a dervish dog that had just been splashed with water. I don’t think he could recognise who I was by then.
He died five hours later, in my arms, of meningitis complications. The AIDS virus had almost completely destroyed his immune system. The last thing he did as he gasped for his last breath was to grab, in fondling manner, my breast. Can you imagine that, with his last breath? Then a stone cold silence slowly settled in the pedestal pose of his face, wrapping it in handsome corsage.
The night was darker than the ace of spades.
Sunrise got pink in the east, bringing soul-sickening waves of violet dawn. My nerves fed on my exhaustion. People came out like ants to the organised misery of their daily grind. The rising noise, the bleak honky-tonk of hootering mini-buses, the wafting hazy mist, all sucked my spirit.
The neon light blinked under the misty hug, with the coming day pregnant with unpleasant suggestions. The surprising part was that people were just going about their business as if nothing had happened.
What use is prying fingers on wounds. If I tell you Lusapho’s death turned me on, would you be surprised with the persistence of sexual hunger, even in the dark face of death. Or would you be disgusted? I don’t have to justify myself under the hostile stare of pusillanimous deaf piano tuners. I ware my hat in the house when I want. If we must use the psychiatrists as our crutches, the terrible goings are memories of a baffled life seeking an outlet.
I met the day with blend of insouciance and despair, an aura of defeat and to-hell-with-it-all. Things started creaking on my hinges. Life just started to weigh me down, down.
I’ve never really known the courageous freedom of seeking out things I feel in my heart. Lusapho had that. He was always leaving me behind in dark desperation, with cuts that shed no blood. Not this time.

Thursday, 10 April 2008

Generating Shakespeare

On Tuesday evening I watched an episode of Generations, our local sopie at SABC 1 and felt revolted. There’s this rich chick there called Karabo acted by Connie Ferguson. Apparently she had been charting on-line with a web friend. In one episode she had a public, unconvincing, altercation with a journalist character, Paul about journalistic ethics. It later turns out her web friend and day-light enemy are one and the same. Ring a bell? Sleepless In Seattle! That is why I felt revolted.

There’s nothing wrong with copying a storyline—JM Coetzee does it all the time with most of his novel. The crux of the matter is that you have to refresh the storyline and make it relevant to your audience and times—again something JM does so brilliantly. But the dystrophic copy and paste sort of thing happening in our sopies is nauseating to say the least.

Talking about re-inventing the storyline; I also watched, on the same evening, Shakespeare eMzansi in SABC 1. What a brilliant concept. I’m told it is going to be 26 episodes of 5 series. The one currently on play now, Entabeni—and no it has nothing to do with me—is certainly up to standard. It is based on Shakespear’s play Macbeth. The acting could be more professional, but the writers have brilliantly re-invented Shakespeare storyline, made it relevant for the time without loosing much of Shakespeare’s plot. They’ve also made it relevant to our situation and times.

I have heard it said that the idea was to make people revisit the dramas of Shakespeare. Well, I suspect it is working; in my home my siblings have been asking more questions about Macbeth, lately. I’ve not yet seen them read the plays, but at this rate it is only a matter of time. The other day I had my four year old nephew intimating on his bath the act we played together; Foul is fair, and fair is foul! Perhaps not an ideal first line to learn from Shakespeare, but we’ve to start somewhere, innit?

The lesson Shakespeare wanted to teach in the play Macbeth is the inexorable and inescapable vindictive power of the moral universe. That whatever means you take to achieve your ends will come back to haunt or vindicate you in the end. Our present president might be a stark reminder of that.

Lady Macbeth, while still convincing her husband to murder the irreprehensible King Duncan, accuses him of wanting to win without dirtying his hands. She says he’s not without ambition, but lacks the “illness should attend it ... that he would not play false, and yet would wrongly win.” Macbeth’s conscience is still healthy then as he replies in a monologue:
I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other. . .

Let’s look at this in the light of our country and times, especially since ruling’s party’s last conference? The greenflies have it that a certain gentleman, who is now the vice president of the ANC has been responsible for the bad karma between their out going president and the present. It is also rumoured that at the first meeting of the ruling party’s newly elected NEC the blood was so heated their president had to be assuaged for more than twenty minutes after walking out of the meeting accusing the delegates of planning to get rid of him through his coming trial.

It turns out also that there are people in the higher echelons of the ruling party who want to win without playing false in the public eye. It’s been rumoured that Lady Macbeth occupies the parliamentary Speaker seat, and that she eggs and fire the passion of the present deputy president to overcome his repugnance for the end to justify the means:
Thou'dst have, great Glamis, / That which cries "Thus thou must do if thou have it; / And that which rather thou dost fear to do / Than wishest should be undone." Hie thee hither, / That I may pour my spirits in thine ear / And chastise with the valor of my tongue / All that impedes thee from the golden round / Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem / To have thee crowned withal.

Lady Macbeth is here saying Macbeth fears to do what must be done, even though he would not wish it undone, if it were done. I hope our Macbeth has enough sense to quote and stick to the words of sober Macbeth: "If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me without my stir."

Another question is, when the did is done, will we, as the general public, be better of it. As the Greek proverb goes, ‘Rule shows the man.’ No one ever knows with certainty how virtuous—or vicious—a man might be until he holds office and has power.

I cannot wait to see how the team of Shakespeare eMzansi treats, probably the most beautiful, if dry words, ever came out of any writer of all time. That passage is towards the end of the play Macbeth, and worth quoting in full:
Seyton: The Queen, my lord, is dead.
Macbeth: She should have died hereafter,
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Do you still think Shakespeare is passé and irrelevant? Think again. And that, I believe, is the idea behind Shakespeare eMzansi. Now; “Weary with toil I haste me to my bed...” (Sonnet 27)

Tuesday, 08 April 2008

The Saturday Weekend Argus [April 5 2008] on its Issues page published two articles, No, Mr. Mbeki, telling the truth is not being racist by Bronwyn M

The Saturday Weekend Argus [April 5 2008] on its Issues page published two articles, No, Mr. Mbeki, telling the truth is not being racist by Bronwyn McIntosh; and Is SA crime a ‘race war’? by Rodney Warwick. The ideal situation, of course, would have been to publish different views on the issue, but as it is, the Weekend Argus chose to publish two articles of similar view at the same time.

I agree with Warwick—who we were told is completing his Ph.D in history through UCT—that ‘[t]he press can lead the way by encouraging public debate . . .’ on crime; but feel he grossly exaggerates when he says what is happening in SA is ‘similar to the late 19th century pogroms against Jews.’ In fact if I was Jewish I’d feel offended by the comparison. The major problem with Warwick’s article, even more than the tortured use of Niall Ferguson’s work in War of the World to support an unconvincing thesis, is the nauseating Oprahesque praxis of trauma assertiveness as means to win public regard.

Reading history one understands that Fascism begins with specious recovery of certain community values, cultural and otherwise; and nostalgia for the ‘better’ past. From there, the usual route is Gleichasaltung—the coordination of social institutes to reflect the ideology of the majority group. If I understand Warwick well, he seems to think that SA is in Gleichasaltung stage. He insinuates that the present South African government tacitly condones anti-white crime, because ‘anti-white crime suits ANC perfidy of preaching non-racialism but also espousing aggressive “Africanisation” and the demolition of white South African historical identity.’

I’m not a member of the ANC, and so cannot vouch for them; but my understanding of South African black politics is that it is actually the ANC that occupies the mean against extreme Pan Africanist position of most black political organization. In fact, I dare say, the ANC is currently loosing ground in black societies because it is seen as not being Africanist enough.

Further more Warwick is selective in his choice of crime examples to suit his thesis. Ask any reader of the Daily Voice or Sowetan, and they’ll tell you of more gruesome and sadist daily acts of black on black crime, far worse than the two chosen from ‘Afrikaans Sunday newspaper’ by Warwick. The truth of the matter is that, as much as black on white violence happens, it does so far less regularly than black on black violence. And there’s scant evidence even if that is racial motivated. Farm crimes are clearly premeditated as mostly some form of revenge, but the motive is usually more personal than racial.

In his analysis of history, Warwick, puts wrong construction almost in everything. He notes, hugger-mugger, the history of Congo. A slight peruse of Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost is enough introduction for the magnitude and horror of brutal Belgian colonialist rule in Congo, and how it prefigured the history of the country.

Warwick also compares the SA situation to Hep! Hep! riots that showed the depth of popular German anti-Semitism stimulated by hatred of successful Jews. He wants us to believe that SA criminal element is Khapers deployed for the pogroms. And to think we’re in a similar position as Rwandan era of Akuzu—the core of the concentric webs of political, economic, and military muscle and patronage that came to be known as Interrahamwe. All of it is baseless, mischievous and recklessly alarmist.

Crime in SA is bad, we all feel that way. White South Africans are only now waking up to how bad the situation really is. To most black people it has been a lifelong reality of tragic pain, which the coming of ANC government, with all its flaws, was the first to attempt to do anything about, though what its done is still not nearly enough. To most of us the ANC demonstrates a better record than all historic revolutionary parties for not permitting itself a discretionary exercise of power, but choosing to regulate itself more by Constitutional principles than demands of circumstances.

Warwick trespasses on the understanding of our country’s reality when he says ‘the de facto situation is that whites are under criminal siege explicitly because of their “race”’. And pushes our limit to a breaking point when he says ‘[i]t is illogical to judgementally link cultural groupings, let alone individuals, to their forefathers’ moral controversies, but shallowness of popular perception unfortunately ensures it is often inevitably.’ Further on he mockingly terms the past South African governments of prejudice a forced position on whites for their ‘radical survival option.’

Most of us, as the American journalist Sydney Harris once wrote, “believe what we want to believe, what we like to believe, what suits our prejudices and fuels our passions.” But I’d have expected better from a PhD candidate; better use of facts to reconcile with reality, for one. As it is, Warwick will fit well in the field of historical romancers; he does such a superb job of arranging facts to fit his passions, something very endemic to colonialist self-flutters.

Unfortunately for him, real history demands coming to terms even with blighted parts as necessary steps towards regeneration. It could be his likes stand in the way of our true understand of ourselves as a real nation, and path to true reconciliation based in honesty. ‘Tis the measure of wise men to prefer things that are necessary to those convenient and desultory.

The challenge, as it is in our country after political democracy, is to find better ways for wealth redistribution to regress the scales, which in this country are tilted to favour the bias of white people even in this generation and others to come still until we level the fields. Think of a relay marathon where are upon one group has been given a head start at the expense of holding the other by oppressive means. You don’t by releasing the other from oppressive means alone level the field, because the truth of the matter is that one group has done more rounds than the other and closer to the prize. Justice demands that you elevate the other group to where the other already is by means of interference.

What we need most are means of rescuing ourselves from the mess we find ourselves in due to a combination of a lot of things, chief of which is deliberate impoverishment of one group of people for the promotion and hegemony of the other. If one thing should be clear to us by now is that, it is a very, very dangerous thing for all concerned to tilt the scales to the extent that others feel they’ve nothing to loose in the reign of chaos, which is what made SA produce such nihilistic and sadists criminals.

What is this, tongues again?

It is told that Aesop, the fabler and slave to the philosopher, Democritus, was asked by his master to prepare a sumptuous meal for a banquet with his friends and student. Aesop, being cheeky too big for his shoes slave decided to teach his master a lesson in manners. He prepared a meal made up of only tongues. Twice he did, dishing them accompanied by well thought lectures on the values of tongues. The third time when one of Democritus’ friend was served a dish of tongues exclaimed; ‘What is this, tongues again? Democritus, I’m getting tongue tied from eating tongues.’ Thus he stood up to go and puke outside.

That the feeling I had when some of you this week drew my attention to our begrudged friend, David Bullard, the aspersive columnist at the Sunday Times. After reading his latest stint, Uncolonised Africa wouldn’t know what it was missing, I discovered he’s growing less subtle in stating the tract of his column in his recent article. The gist of his argument, as always, is that it is thanks to the Occident that Africa, and South Africa in particular, is civilized and developed.

Personally, even as far as imperialist go, Bullard has became quite unoriginal and, frankly, boring as a broken record long time ago. He’s really nothing more than a waste of creative energy with recycled superior complex, mouldy with depth bang of a wet firecracker. It’d be an even greater waste of time to write about him if what he was saying was not something going around South African white liberal corridors, prattling as bons mots.

The kind of vulgarity associated with Bullard’s writing rise to anarchist level when it attempts to engage serious subjects like history with its flurry of coruscating callow cartoonist logic. He just adds to the scarifying cacophony than the voice of reason in our country. Where he is right it’s for the wrong reasons, and is rude. And as Eric Hoffer’s lovely line goes; “rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.”

I use to be a fan of Bullard’s antagonistic humour until I found what I thought to be medicine in sugar coat gradually turning into sugar coated poison. There’s next to nothing cathartic about it, in fact I found it not to be offensive and sometimes downright racist, as most of you have now come to realise from his latest issue, Uncolonised Africa wouldn’t know what it was missing. Of course Bullard and his coterie would see me as too sensitive to the race issue and, together with the likes of president Mbeki, accuse of having Stalinist sensitivity to criticism. So I shall leave it at that, acquiesce with a realisation that the distant between our worlds seem to be uncrossable.

I thought I made it clear also that I’m rather tired of the autistic babble of the Sunday Times. And so am rather discouraged when people egg me on to check this article or the other there. I must emphasise; I’m sure there are people out there who get pleasure and edification in reading that sort of thing, I’m not one of them, hence I stopped buying it. Even now, reading it after a welcome hiatus of about two months, I felt I was returning into a caldron of hectoring, bragging, lazy makers of mash-ups and vapid insights. The only thing worse than living in an unbearable society, as SA is gradually growing, is having to read the unbearable nonsense written by most of the commentators there. So please, have mercy on me. The best way to treat a bore is to ignore them.

There is Papua New Guinea something they call kros, a traditional angry tirade by a wife directed at a husband with the intention of being heard by everyone in the village. Many husbands endure it without uttering a single word as one of those things a guy has to go through, pms induced and all. Pass the kros of course the wife usual gets a beating from the husband if he keeps on it longer than it is necessary. Why not we take the likes of Bullard as something we’ve to go through, imperialist induced nostalgia and all. Not that I propose the use of stick if they keep on it longer than necessary. Let’s rather stick to our constitutional values, and never resorting to any violent means to silence anyone. We use the same logic against those who scream for the death penalty: You don’t rise above cruelty, foolishness, prejudice, or injustice by descending to its level.


Paul Theroux, reviewing Tim Jeal’s biography of Henry Morton Stanley, Stanley, I Presume begins thus: ‘Poor Africa, the happy hunting ground of the mythomaniac, the rock star buffing up his or her image, the missionary with a faith to sell, the child buyer, the retailer of dirty drugs or toxic cigarettes, the editor in search of a scoop, the empire builder, the aid worker, the tycoon wishing to rid himself of his millions, the school builder with a bucket of patronage, the experimenting economist, the diamond merchant, the oil executive, the explorer, the slave trader, the eco-tourist, the adventure traveller, the bird watcher, the travel writer, the escapee, the banker, the busybody, the Mandela-sniffer, the political fantasist, the buccaneer and your cousin the Peace Corps Volunteer.’ And now we can also add; the impotent imperialist stranded a wrong century. Their wish, most, is to transform themselves while wanting to change Africa, but, as that original master imperialist of them all, Stanley, saw it; “We went into the heart of Africa self-invited—therein lies our fault,”. And they never really embodied her genius loci, the spirit of the land, so they decay in slow burn motion of liver-lipped irony and sterile imagination.

The Kangaman, the Strawman, and the Fisherman

Easters in the South African political calendar is usually the time when political leaders go cavorting at Moria gatherings of ZCC (Zionist Christian Church). The tradition, funny enough, was begun by the groot krokodil [P.W. Botha] in 1985, much to the indignation of anti-apartheid movements. F.W. Deklerk and Nelson Mandela didn’t disdain the practice; and so did Gatsha Buthelezi. We’ve seen President Mbeki too prancing on stage at the gatherings, much against temperament. One can only conclude that making political gain demands displays of religious allegiance in this country.

I thought the kangaman, alias JZ, would be in Moria this year; after all he’d be in character with all the prancing and gyrating; putting down Umtshin’ wam for the rod for the moment. And if the gathering in Moria are anything similar to ZCC township gatherings, then he’s guaranteed at least a ratio of 5 women to himself. Surely the kangaman must be salivating at such prospects.

Or perhaps, judging by the answer he gave at the Jewish gathering he addressed recently, he draws limits on religious bounds. I imagined him thinking about the nuisance of going through legion rituals trying to please a yenta. All that Krank and God, the burden of Yom ha-Kippurim, and kosher diet. After all if the kangaman is not terefah he’s nothing. Imagine him having to follow Shohet rules to slaughters eNkandleni, just for the flip of a Bedouin tent. No thanks, thought the kangaman, despite himself; putting it euphemistically; ‘If one can be arranged we can talk . . .’ when the question was thrown if he’d consider taking a Jewish bride. Then followed that awkward moment, when it was not certain whether the gathering was laughing with or at him. Such are growing pains to the top job of the country.

Now that politically he’s firing from all cylinders, the kangaman, must be wondering who shall be his spiritual advisor. I suspect the specious pastor is challenged on the moral and theological department. As a strawman, he like to mimics what goes with the wind. He, as a columnist of the Mail and Guardian coined, speaks bread to the bakers, meat to the butchers, and pies when the two are gathered; which is not as bad as it sounds actual. Our country, divided at its seams as it is, needs more people who can speaks pies, so to speak. But the kangaman must feel in need of spiritual anchor now and then even if the reed is more useful than an oak in times of storms. I’m sure a shaman, a marabout, anything to appease the makombwe ancestors he would not shun.

Methinks it is inevitable that the kangaman must go to Moria, even if its next year, to assist his traditional propitiation if nothing else. If they throw in a wife or two, I’m sure he won’t mind, but things are going beyond the pale regarding his coming corruption trial. He needs all the help he can get; and burning impepho outside the courthouse his time might just not cut it. Hence I say the only way to go for the kangaman is to follow the momentum of the rising rebellion of the masses. We all know the ZCC is the biggest independent church in the land. It’d be stupid for him not to milk that cow. So if he knows what’s best for him he’d be acquainting himself nemingqungqo yase Zion [with Zionist prance songs]. Perhaps he’s already ahead of us, what with all his Jewish association, which after all, is the seat of Zion. What he needs to add now is the spiritual hooey and African trim to the Masonic bunkum. What has he got to loose but the chains zakwa Nomgqungqo [of jail].

As a pastor he might even be given a platform to preach at Moria. I’ve thought about his homily, but will desist from suggestions since this is a family site. Okay, I’ll give you a clue; he’ll frequently quote from The Book of Songs: I’m black but I’m beautiful . . . If I wer him though I’ll conclude with an Aesopic fable, as told better by Herodotus in his History (I 141).

Herodotus narrated how the Ionian Greeks, who had resisted the call for assisting the Persian King Cyrus in attacking Croesus, the rich Lydian king. When they had Croesus had been subjugated by Cyrus they sent ambassadors to offer their submission. Cyrus’ reply was to tell Aesop’s fable. “A flute player saw some fish and started to play, with the idea that the fish would come out on land. When they disappointed him he took a net, cast it, and hauled a great quantity of fish. When he saw them jumping around, he said to them: ‘[Why wretched creatures] You don’t need to dance for me now, since you wouldn’t come out and dance when I played my flute.” Herodotus assures us that the Greeks did not miss the point of the fable. I’m sure none will miss it here too.

Wednesday, 02 April 2008

Time To Face Up To Issues

Time To Face Up To Issues

Last year, towards the ANC (African National Congress) Polokwane conference, I wrote in the Mail and Guardian a piece [The Media is no innocent messenger] on the need for our media to engage with ANC conference documents. To its credit the Mail and Guardian subsequently established a column titled Polokwane Briefing to give platform to that. The debate was mostly vigorous, if at times a little dull. It offered readers opportunity to make up their own minds about the issues, something very rare in South African manipulative media.

Now that pessimism is a prevailing mood in our country, especially concerning racial issues, like in the late eighties, perhaps it is time we establish another public platform to revisit the foundations of our so called Rainbow Nation. We could talk about many things, like trying to shed some light on matters of moral character in public office. But I would suggest we commence with our scourge, racism.

We’ve to investigate the retrogressive aspects of our time that has given confidence to the plague of racism to asperse our reconciliatory efforts. We all know the Rainbow Nation notion has never really had much substance in our racial charged society. For a moment, when Mandela was in the helm of power, it gave us a monkey branch to hide so as to gain confidence to strive away from reality through wishful thinking. Now reality has return with vengeance. Our news is contaminated with racial incidences, and the manner by which we comment on them betrays our still prejudiced mental frames.

The truth of the matter is that most white South Africans are in denial about racism, just as most blacks are in resentment. The cataclysmic manner by which the ruling party (ANC) ousted its president, Thabo Mbeki, for the controversial figure, JZ (Jacob Zuma) gave confidence to opposition parties that all might not be quiet within the ANC front; that it might not be vulnerable on the next elections. It also gave colour to irresponsible speculations of the Cassandras, especially in our media that mostly pander to the thralls of mocking infamy towards the ruling party. The coterie of their commentators, whose use of facts mostly amounts to innuendo against the government—not half bad when not subject to suspicious motives—went on over drive.

The Weltanschauung of the media in SA (South Africa) is liberal media, a good thing under normal circumstances. But in SA liberal does not necessary mean mean non partisan free debate in the media. It means, more or else, secret appendage of, and patronage machine for the official opposition party, the Democratic Alliance with designs of conscious manipulation of our organised habits and opinions to harness to haughty pretensions of subtle racism in the name of enlightenment. It is little more than superlative, hackish, uninspired, repetitive and depthless hauteur of hand-me-down pseudo liberal kitsch pretending to champion values of humanity and freedom. That on its own would be tolerable if it were not done with such nauseating degree of manipulation and news selection designed to subvert other point of views.

Another problem with South African version of liberalism is undercurrents of colonial crapulosities. South African liberal commentary mostly has what Edward Said in his 1978 book, Orientalism, termed Western essentialisation of Arab world. Substitute Africa for Arab and you get similar modes of discourse bound up with impositions of imperial power. Only the New Imperialism instead of wishing to civilise the natives, aims at ‘enlightening’ them into the so called humanism. This reification of imperialist mentality strives, this time, for dominance, not by creating an Empire, by through linguistic hegemony and condescending liberal mantra.

The New Imperialism is supported by some high-minded black pests and wannabe epicurean exploiters—the so called foot-lickers—who pour black skin on white prejudices on mistaken idea that it made them enlightened. They too use knowledge as powering disguise for subversive tendencies in the name of freedom of expression and such nauseating never tiring tendencies of cry wolf fingering pointed at failing African states.

There’s also a boomlet of Pan Africanist tendencies aiming to crown their own version of hegemony, but their designs are obvious and clumsy, less subtle, for everyone to see; so no need to go into depth about here.

From all this the South African chattering class finds itself increasingly living in an era of enclaves and niches, squelched by diversity and suspicious of the other. Hence, I say, the establishment of an aseptic public platform may assist in ironing out these issues. Weary as we maybe of these convocations they’re means to introduce our respective points of views when conducted in frank honest manner. It is time SA grooms its coat of many colours so as to pass it to the next generation with lesser fleas.